"You need not get into such a rage, sweet sister mine! I didn’t say it was you, though if the cap fits——" He broke off into a sulky silence. Wolff had entered. He was in full dress, and bespattered with mud, as though he had returned from an arduous ride. In one hand he carried a dispatch case. One glance at his face showed them that he controlled a strong excitement. "I am awfully sorry, Nora," he said hurriedly, "it is impossible for me to accompany you. I have been driven from pillar to post the whole day, and now I have some work which will take me the whole night. You must give my excuses to General von Hulson. He will understand why it is. A good many officers will be absent for the same reason." "Then I must go alone?" she asked. Absorbed as he was, he heard the reproach and annoyance. "Do you mind that?" "I shall hate it!" she said emphatically. The word "hate," with all its too recent associations, caused him to look at her closely. He saw that she had lost her pallor, and that the old defiant light burnt in her eyes. "Perhaps it would be better, then, if Miles accompanied you," he said. "There is still time." "I do not wish Miles to do anything he objects to," she returned coldly. "No doubt he has his reasons for not going." Wolff’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. "No doubt," he said, glancing in Miles’s direction; "but perhaps if I added my appeal to yours he would consent to overcome—his reasons." Miles rose sullenly to his feet. "If you want it—of course," he mumbled. Wolff nodded absently. He went into his room, closed the door, leaving Nora alone. There had been an expression of anxiety on his face which did not, however, excuse his apparent indifference in Nora’s eyes, and she stood frowning after him, puzzled and deeply wounded. But she made no attempt to follow him. The scene of the previous evening had been a last effort; she was too weary, too hopeless to strive again after a reunion which seemed already an impossibility. Twenty minutes later Miles reappeared in the full glory of his evening clothes. Nora was surprised—perhaps a little disappointed—to observe that his spirits had risen. "The carriage is waiting," he said. "Hurry up, or we shall be late." Nora hesitated. A superstitious clinging to an old custom led her to the threshold of Wolff’s room. She tried the handle of the door without effect, and when she turned away again her cheeks were scarlet. "Locked, eh?" Miles said. "I bet he’s afraid of us catching sight of his papers. Arnold said some of those staff fellows have the handling of pretty valuable stuff." Nora gave no attention to his words, though she was destined to remember them. She led the way down the narrow stairs into the street where the cab was waiting for them, and a minute later they were rattling out of the little by-street into the busy thoroughfare.